A structure that contains a fluid in a three-dimensional network structure formed by a substance having gel forming ability (hereinafter, referred to as a gelator) is referred to as a gel. Generally, the case where the fluid is water is referred to as a hydrogel and the case where the fluid is an organic liquid other than water (organic solvent, oil, and the like) is referred to as an organogel or an oil gel. The oil gel (organogel) is used for adjusting flowability of cosmetics and paints in the field of cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, agricultural chemicals, foods, adhesives, paints, resins, and the like. The oil gel (organogel) is also widely used for the field of environmental protection such as preventing water pollution by forming the gel of waste oil as a solid.
Research of the gelator has been mainly carried out for macromolecular compounds. In recent years, however, research and development have been carried out for low molecular-weight compounds to which various functions can be easily introduced compared with the macromolecular compounds. As described above, the oil gel (organogel) has been used in a wide range of fields and has been expected to expand its field of use in the future. Consequently, for expanding the use of the oil gel, the gelator of the low molecular-weight compound (hereinafter, may be referred to as a low molecular-weight gelator) is required to have gel forming ability to a wide variety of organic solvents. To these problems, until now, various compounds have been developed as the low molecular-weight gelator that can form a gel having excellent stability with a small added amount to various organic solvents. As one of the compounds, for example, it has been reported that a sugar derivative derived from each of monosaccharides has a structure easy to form a strong hydrogen bond with each other and thus that the sugar derivative can form the gels of various types of organic solvents (Non Patent Document 1). It has been reported that the low molecular-weight gelator using the sugar derivative can gel both solvents of water and oil (hydrophilic organic solvent and hydrophobic organic solvent) and a mixed solvent thereof (Patent Document 1).